Possession of Us
by LondonBelow
Summary: Imrahil always wanted a brother. Denethor was not exactly what he had in mind. Also features Finduilas and Boromir


Disclaimer: Lord of the Rings and all related people, places and things were created by J.R.R. Tolkien.

He always wanted a brother.

Imrahil loved his sisters. At least, usually he loved his sisters. Sometimes he envied them. Finduilas and Ivriniel had one another. Imrahil had his friends, but when he heard his sisters' giggling through their bedroom door he knew he would never be wrapped in so close a partnership. He knew it from the very first time he understood that giggle, when he was eight years old and slept in the nursery. Then he felt so envious he tasted bile.

In general, though, he loved them.

Nevertheless: Imrahil wished he had a brother. He wanted someone with whom to play rough, because even when they forcibly braided his hair he never hit his sisters; he wanted secrets to tell and someone to whom he might tell them. Ideally that brother would be younger, but Imrahil minded being the only boy in the family more than he minded being the baby.

In fact, at times he enjoyed his position as baby, abused it even.

Dusk found him on a stone bench in the garden. Imrahil held a flower in his hand, a nothing sort of flower, tapered white petals cupped around the merest tuft of pollen. It was a tiny thing, no larger than his thumb, of a striking beauty on first glance and after, nothing; it was a thing of no meaning to Imrahil beyond being something to hold and gaze upon, his eyes fixed as though in study. It was what Imrahil needed then: a distraction.

In truth Imrahil saw the flower no more than he felt the rapidly cooling stone of the bench beneath him. His mind was on other matters. Mere hours remained between this moment and his sister's wedding. Though Imrahil had put on a brave front, congratulating his sister, saying he knew she would be happy and that he was happy for her, the idea upset him. Inside himself, Imrahil was unready to say goodbye.

Only a years-built habit kept the young man's shoulders from slouching.

"Is the little duckling sulking?"

Lady Finduilas of Dol Amroth, soon-to-be Lady of Gondor, thumped onto the bench beside her little brother and playfully tweaked his ear.

Always conscientious of such things, Imrahil set the flower on his other side. "Say _that_ ten times!"

"Duckling sulking duckling sulking duckling suckling—" Finduilas stopped as both siblings laughed. "_You_ are changing the subject! Imrahil?" She rested a hand on his arm, leaning forward to watch his face as he thought over her question, "Are you all right?" Her hair slipped forward and hung in a tangled curtain.

Imrahil nodded. "I am fine, really," he said, "only… sad." It was such a little word for the big thing inside of him.

For about the space of a heartbeat, in the breath between "my daughter is to wed" and the name of the bridegroom, unbidden came a swell of hope in Imrahil that he would find as an adult a sense of the kinship he had never quite ceased longing for. In that brilliant moment Imrahil all but shone, the fingertips of his mental self brushing perfection: his growing family, his sister's happiness, a brother. Then reality came crashing down around his shoulders in three harsh syllables and Imrahil recognized that he was losing his sister. This was not the world improving. This was only the world changing.

Simple words satisfied Imrahil. He needed no melancholy: his sadness was more than enough. Something earth-moving would have been exciting of course, but Imrahil's day-to-day life had reaffirmed itself as just that, day-to-day life, and appropriately mundane.

That simple revelation melted Finduilas' big sister teasing.

"I'm going to miss you."

Finduilas shook her head. "I'm only going to be in Minas Tirith. Nothing has to change."

Imrahil tore the stem from the flower. He did it deliberately. That flower, a delicate and beautiful thing, was nothing more than a weed, and everything was going to change. "Finduilas," he murmured. They lived together, saw one another every day.

"All right, I'm sorry," she ceded. "Things _will_ change, but you are not going to lose me as your sister, all right, duckling? I won't love you any less," she promised. A smile began to form on Imrahil's face. "If anything, I'll love you more without you annoying me every six seconds."

Trust his sister to have him laughing again. Finduilas could practically sense Imrahil's thoughts. She knew just which words to lift his spirits.

_Well, not anymore and never again,_ he told himself.

With a sigh, Imrahil cast his gaze up the forbidding slope of Mount Mindolluin, then out at the walls of the city. Finduilas had loved running more than anything. As a child that was her chief delight, running at full tilt up and down the beach, kicking in the surf. There was no space to run in this city, and even if there were it would be across rough, hard, filthy stone, not accommodating sand cradling her feet at each stride and pillowing her inevitable, giggling fall. Finduilas ran less as she grew older, but she had never truly stopped.

Where would she run here?

"Does this place not bother you?" he asked. "It is a cage." Never one to hide his true feelings, Imrahil without difficulty embraced his own dislike of Minas Tirith.

Finduilas nodded. "That's true," she agreed in a tone of waning enthusiasm, "I am far less fond of this city than of home, but I love Denethor. I know you don't believe me," she added quickly, cutting off any objection, "but I do love him, very much, and he loves me."

"But will he let you run?" Imrahil asked. He disliked his future brother-in-law, who was cold and removed. Not once had Imrahil seen Denethor reach to take Finduilas's hand. Yes, he watched her when she entered the room, but he never seemed to smile when he did so—or ever, for that matter.

Finduilas pinched Imrahil's elbow. "I can always visit. Imrahil, it is marriage, not death." She kissed his cheek. "You'll be fine without me. Make good choices, and you will be fine."

o0o0o

Those words haunted Imrahil twelve years later, when all that remained of his sister were a shell, his memories, and two lost boys. _It is marriage, not death._

Saying goodbye had broken his heart. He could not help asking himself how it mattered what he said to a corpse that was not his sister. He had exchanged formalities with Boromir, who endured his mother's loss with a formal façade, and with Faramir, who had to be told _this is your mother's brother_ and managed only the word "Up!" Now nothing remained but Imrahil's address to his own pain.

"Y… you had to have her, didn't you?"

A part of Imrahil knew that what he was doing was a very bad idea, but a bigger part of Imrahil was drunk, and an even bigger part ravaged by grief so strong he thought he might be sick. The piece of him where he had missed his sister every day had been torn out, or yanked out, or perhaps it remained there, festering, dead with her.

It was such a needless death! She could have come home. Once in five years she had been to Dol Amroth, three times in ten and four in twelve. Every time she arrived her eyes searched hungrily; every time she left her pallor had given way to rosiness and her smile revived.

"She was my wife," Denethor replied.

Neither man was particularly steady on his feet.

"She was my sister!" For her thirty-eight years Finduilas had been Imrahil's sister. He refused to acknowledge twelve years as wife as more meaningful than a shared childhood, confided secrets and fears, pranks and gentle bullying. "You… treated her like a concubine!" So saying, Imrahil felt tears spring to his eyes. It was never a thought he had entertained. My sister is a concubine. My sister is a whore. She had been the Lady of Gondor, a title like shackles.

"I treated her like a queen!" Denethor rose to face Imrahil on an even field, staggered and had to rest his hand on the table to support himself. Imrahil's first accusation had drawn attention; now every servant in the Merethrond was keeping himself or herself busy with half-attended needless tasks, watching the Steward of Gondor and Lord of Dol Amroth quarrel. A boy watched, wide-eyed, from the shadows, unmoving. "She was… she was happy. I never touched her after she was… damaged…"

"She was useless to you and you made certain she knew it!" Imrahil's accusation echoed.

Those first months after her second son's birth had been awful for Imrahil, for all the family at Dol Amroth. He imagined there was some difficulty in Minas Tirith, but in Dol Amroth they lived with bated breath until the next letter. Ultimately Finduilas was healthy again and everyone was much happier, and if the healers advised that she bear no more children, what did that matter? She had one adorable, troublemaking, wonderful little monster, and it was general opinion that if Faramir was half as much trouble as his elder brother, limiting Finduilas to two was an act of mercy by the Valar.

Denethor, it seemed, was of another mind. Certainly no man believed kindness meant not touching his wife—but then, he never had reached for her hand, had he?

"I loved her!"

"Once, perhaps!"

Love never died. Imrahil loved Finduilas still. He had loved her in life, but as long as her memory remained he would continue to love her. She was dead, not gone, not from memory. Yet the past tense seemed appropriate, coming from Denethor. If he had loved her once that love had waned dramatically in the early years of their marriage, until it lay forgotten. He loved her for a spell.

Something in Imrahil broke when he thought of this, of the man who had claimed his sister's heart, taken it and returned her nothing. "Once you loved her, but you possessed her, and was that not more to you? She was yours to keep in this stone prison, locked away like some treasure in your vaults; she was yours to break!"

"You go too far," Denethor warned. He had pressed his fingertips to his brow as a look of pain contorted his face. Imrahil took great pleasure in that pain. He wanted Denethor to suffer--he wanted Denethor to suffer as he had made Finduilas suffer. "You are drunk." As was Denethor, but that was not the point. "I suggest... you retire for the evening..."

"I'm not finished," Imrahil replied viciously. This man had taken his sister from him.

This man had taken a good woman's love from her and drained her empty.

This man had treated his wife as a means to make sons.

This man had held a daughter from her family simply because he could.

There were no words hateful enough to express Imrahil's rage. Even if there were, Denethor did not care enough to listen. Imrahil wanted Denethor to hurt as Finduilas had hurt, as her family had hurt, as her sons were hurting. Generally the term 'motherless' seemed little like a curse to Imrahil. His mother had died giving him birth. The difference was love, Imrahil realized: Adrahil loved his children. Denethor did not know how to love. He had never received love, only taken it, like some _thing_.

Imrahil hauled back and punched the Steward of Gondor in the eye without a thought. The crack of bone on bone satisfied him immensely.

"Father!"

Boromir. A boy watching, unmoving, from the shadows. He darted forward and hugged his father's hand to his chest, but Denethor shook him off, stumbling and squeaking in pain. "Is my father going to die now, too?" Boromir asked Imrahil, a slight whine to his voice, a plea.

Imrahil shook his head. "Not for a long time, sweetheart." He looked again to Denethor as he added, "The worse for Gondor."

o0o0o

The following morning, Imrahil rose and immediately sat back on the edge of his bed. His head swam. He tried again, standing slowly and making his way to the pitcher of water on the dresser. Once he had splashed enough cold water on his face to feel awake and half-aware of his surroundings, he managed, "Have I expressed lately how much I appreciate you, Sidhan?"

"Well, not in words," replied his valet. "How are you feeling?"

"Like a rat crawled into my mouth, bit inside my head and died in my belly." Imrahil glanced down at himself and realized he had slept in his clothes the previous night. "What was I drinking?"

"Wine at first, straight spirits by the end of the evening. My Lord Steward _requested_," the tone here made it clear that this was not a request, "your presence as soon as you are fit. Sir, do you remember what... what happened happened yesterday?"

Imrahil remembered liquor. He shook his head. "After paying respects to my sister, nothing. I think I argued with the Steward..." Imrahil trailed off as color drained from his face. He turned to Sidhan. "I assaulted the Steward of Gondor," he said, half of him requesting confirmation, half of him aware that he had forfeited his life. Then he straightened and raised his chin with a pride. For what he had done for his sister, he would not apologize.

When he appeared before the Steward, Imrahil bowed politely, but there was no respect in his eyes.

Boromir stood nearby, the picture of a little lord. His brother at his side was the perfect opposite. Someone had made a valiant attempt to make Faramir presentable, but between his disheveled hair and the saliva he had wiped on his shirt each time he caught himself sucking his thumb, those efforts had been undone.

Denethor drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair.

"None seems to recall how I came by _this_," he said, indicating an eye blacked and swollen shut, "though I would swear I came by it from your fist!"

Imrahil met his brother-in-law--_ex_-brother-in-law's eyes and said nothing. He may have sharpened the axe but he would not walk himself to the chopping block.

"Can you recall, Lord Imrahil, whence came this injury?"

Imrahil opened his mouth, and as he did a sudden jolt went through him. He did not, after all, want to die. He would, and bravely, but he feared to.

Another voice spoke quickly, "I remember!" Boromir glanced at his uncle for only a second, conveying in that look his complete understanding. "I... I..." he stammered nervously. Everyone in the room watched him, too many eyes for so small a boy. "Your horse, Rosroch, kicked you." Imrahil hardly believed it. His nephew, who had always been taught to speak only the truth, was lying, and for him! Did Boromir even know who Imrahil was? He had been formal with him the day before, bowing and giving rote responses, pretending his eyes were not swollen from crying. "I said nothing because... because Faramir loves her, and I was afraid you would be angry with her." He stepped forward and knelt before his father. "I'm sorry, Sire."

"Is this so?" Denethor asked Imrahil.

"My Lord..." What could he say? No, My Lord, your son is lying, he has shown a greater loyalty to me than to you. "...it is."

Denethor gave his son a look under which grown men would tremble. "Do you understand what you have done?" he asked. But his son bore it without flinching.

Later, when they had a moment alone, Imrahil repeated the question. "_Do_ you understand what you did, Boromir? You barely know me."

"You took care of my brother," Boromir replied, "and you were Mama's brother."

It cut Imrahil to hear: you _were _her brother. "But what you did... I was proud of you, but I must know that you understand."

Boromir looked up to meet his uncle's eyes, tossing hair from his eyes. He wore a surety of conviction only a child can own.

"I made a good choice."

Imrahil had not considered her words when he drew back his fist, but he did now, and he wondered. Had he made a good choice? He had satisfied his pride and his pain. As to _goodness_.... Imrahil looked at his nephew. He never imagined he would have a place in Boromir and Faramir's lives, but with one simple, satisfying act of treason, he had forged a bond neither time nor distance could break.

_You were her brother. _Imrahil thought this time not on tense but possession. He had been hers. Now he was theirs.

_End_


End file.
